Big Solar Thermal Power Plants Planned for Florida, California

Florida Power and Light (FPL) announced on September 26th that it plans to
build a 300-megawatt solar thermal power plant, which will be the
state's first commercial solar thermal power facility. The utility
will first build a 10-megawatt power plant using technology from
Ausra, Inc., which employs flat arrays of Fresnel lenses to focus the
sun's heat. Most of today's commercial solar thermal power plants are
using parabolic mirrors to focus the sun's heat, a technology that's
presumably more expensive and harder to maintain than Fresnel lenses
would be, but Ausra's technology is as yet unproven commercially.
According to the FPL Group, FPL's parent company, the initial plant in
Florida will be expanded to 300 megawatts if the Ausra technology
meets its cost and performance goals. The FPL Group also plans to
develop 200 megawatts of solar thermal power in California within the
next seven years. See the
FPL Group press release and the description
of the technology on the
Ausra Web site.

The FPL Group has also joined with Ausra and a northern California
utility, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), in a separate
commitment to build 1,000 megawatts of solar thermal power over the
next 20 years. PG&E also committed to purchasing an additional 1,000
megawatts of solar thermal power over the next five years. All the
commitments were made as part of the annual meeting of the Clinton
Climate Initiative. See the press releases from
Ausra and
PG&E.

PG&E had already announced plans to develop nearly 1,000 megawatts of
solar thermal power with the help of two solar thermal power
companies: Solel Solar Systems and BrightSource Energy, Inc. Solel
plans to build a 553-megawatt power plant using parabolic mirror
technology, while BrightSource plans to use "distributed power
towers," a technology that draws upon a field of flat, sun-tracking
mirrors to focus the sun's heat on a tower. BrightSource filed an
application with the California Energy Commission in early September
to build a 400-megawatt plant that would consist of 20 separate
20-megawatt power towers. See the press releases from
PG&E, the BrightSource technology description, and the BrightSource press release
(PDF 120 KB).
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